Sorry, Mothers

After becoming a mom, I can know understand this. And when I am out and about free of children and see some mom doing one of these "negative" things I will now give her an encouraging smile and say some kind words - like don't worry it happens to us all.

Interesting read, I have to disagree with this though:



I was good friends with a stay-at-home dad for a while and he dealt with more indignities/ criticism than I did -- though the fact that I can't overhear the mutterings of scandalized passers-by may have skewed the sample a bit.

My, my aren't we all sensitive and fragile this morning?

I thought that NYT article was plain silly. A woman's going to be offended because the school has rules about excuse notes and she hasn't bothered to read the rule book? And everyone tsk tsks sympathetically? Another woman ignores her little girl's question about TV three times and then feels offended when another woman makes a loving remark to that same little girl whose feelings have probably been badly hurt? Get a grip, ladies.

On the other hand, I'm not a mother. Maybe there's something in maternal makeup that justifies this sort of angst-ridden attitude. It's alien to me.

Maybe you just don't care as much -- I mean, you obviously don't love your daughter.

I’m not sure I’m familiar enough with your humour to know for sure MA, but you made ME laugh.

Mothers all over must learn the power of the simple phrase
"SHUT the **** up you old wombat!"

"Stupid cow" works too.

I still vividly remember a time when SonofEva was 3 years old and having a problem with biting other children. (Actually, he wasn't having a problem with it at all...everyone else was!) I had talked, I had punished, I had withheld privileges, you name it. I think I had done everything anyone ever thought of to try to stop him. We were asked to remove him from one program because they were also unable to stop this behavior. I lost a lot of sleep over this.

One Sunday morning when we (and his counselor...it had gone that far) were just about sure he was over this, my son was physically cornered by his Sunday School teacher at church and...you guessed it...he bit her to escape.

The Children's Supervisor tracked me down and yelled at me accusingly in front of several other parents. "I can't believe you let him do this sort of thing! You need to teach your child it's not okay to bite!" she said, pointing her finger at me as I stood there, cringing.

In retrospect, I wish I had bitten her.

Reading your post, Eva, I was hoping against hope that that would be the punchline. I mean that you did bite that accusing finger. Perfect.

Hee... I think for some of these people, loving the kid is no excuse though. You can love too much, be too indulgent, etc.

One thing I've been getting lately, if elliptically, is negative stuff about only children. A boy who goes to sozlet's school (but I don't know him) did something pretty bad, and there's been a lot of discussion of it. Several people have noted that he's an only child as a pertinent detail. Some of them catch themselves and say "I mean sozlet's very well-adjusted, but a lot of only children...", some don't. (More know that she's an only child than that I am, too.)

Well . . . that certainly explains a lot . . .

Do you mind if I use that line? I like it.